Thursday, July 25, 2013

Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet by Sherri L. Smith is, perhaps, the cutest book I’ve ever read. It’s the charming YA novel about Ana Shen, a smart
and sassy young girl of African-American/Chinese-American heritage, upon her
graduation from junior-high school.

The
book displays fourteen-year old Ana as she copes with her many issues—her younger brother, her parents, her nemesis at school. Her junior-high graduation is a near ‘disaster’. Though she has no boyfriend, Ana does have a
huge crush on a boy in her class.
Thankfully, she has a loyal best friend, Chelsea, to help her navigate
life.

The
book has a contemporary feel as it depicts, in Ana’s teacher’s words, a
“‘marvelously biracial, multicultural’ family,” as they prepare for and
participate in a celebration dinner.
Among the likable characters are Ana’s parents, grandparents, and best
friend—featuring dialogue that sounds modern and authentic. For instance, when Ana says:

“We’ve
had exactly three family meals with both sides together. . . We eat out together. We have
to eat out together, or else there’ll be a fight or a disaster, or the end of
the world. . . . This is no longer a
dinner, it’s a competition. That means
you’ve made my life hell for the next’—she glances at her watch—four
hours. Four hours! Holy crap, I’ve gotta go!”

Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet is a YA novel
that will resonate with both older and YA readers, alike. This is a book I’d have loved to have read as
a young adult. I found myself
reminiscing on my own junior-high/high school
graduations, and that time in my life. I
think Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet will
evoke pleasant memories for other readers as well. (This is a book both mothers and their daughters will empathize with
and enjoy reading.)

I
so enjoyed reading this book! Young adult readers will just think, This book
is awesome!

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Vintage Cisneros is the perfect
introduction to the legendary writings of Sandra Cisneros. A graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop,
Cisneros is a poet and novelist. Vintage Cisneros is a compendium of her poems, stories and several
chapters from her first novel, The House
on Mango Street.

This
YA novel is the story of Esperanza, a Mexican-American girl growing up in
Chicago. The thirteen-year old’s tone and language suffuse the book with
authentic emotion. In a series of
vignettes, Esperanza assesses her block, her friends, her universe. Though her name means ‘hope’ in Spanish, she
says: “I would like to baptize myself a new name, a name more like the real me,
the one nobody sees.” Of the world, she
says, “You can never have too much sky.”

Vintage Cisneros also bears
selections from Cisneros’ poetry and stories, such as “Eyes of Zapata” (a long story in the voice of his beloved
that serves as a form of tribute to Emiliano Zapata), “All parts from Mexico, assembled in the USA
or I am born,” “Someday my Prince Popocatépetl will come,” “Love Poem for a non-believer,” “You bring
out the Mexican in me,” and others.

The
writing is personal, specific, with beautiful imagery and sentiments that are searing in their honesty. Most times, Vintage Cisneros reads like a
memoir.
For example, in “Preface from My Wicked Wicked Ways,” Cisneros writes,

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The
most poignant moment in The Cooked Seed
is when Anchee asked her lover, Qigu,
“Do you love me?” They had been
in a relationship for several months, but he had never said the words, I love
you. It was not “the Chinese way,” he said. “You know how I
feel about you, . . . and I know how you feel about me. Isn't that enough?”

They
wed, had a child and remained together for six years. Qigu, an artist, was the grasshopper to
Anchee’s worker-ant (although, she also was an artist).

Born
into a middle-class family in Shanghai, China, Anchee Min survived a painful
and heartbreaking chidhood. This was
during the Cultural Revolution. Min’s
parents “were teachers, and thus regarded
as bourgeois sympathisers.” They lived
in cramped quarters, in which the kitchen doubled as a bathroom, used not only
by Min’s family but also by several neighbors.

Anchee
as a child subsisted near starvation. Her
mother pawned the family’s clothes and
“the backs of her feet bled” as she walked in the snow.

Later—once
Chairman Mao’s formidable widow, Chiang Ching, lost political clout—Min became
a pariah. “I was considered a ‘cooked
seed’—no chance to sprout.”

So
Min was determined to emigrate to the US, in order to expand her life
opportunities. She applied to the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was accepted and managed to obtain the
necessary visa.

In
Chicago, armed with her “English-Chinese dictionary and English 900 sentences book,” she struggles to learn English. Once her college classmate explains the
meaning of “What’s up, dude?” Min
switches from the stuffy “How do you
do?” she had learned in language class and which no one used.

Early
on in the process of learning English, Min makes many language mistakes. Once, she tells Qigu he is “full of booloony”
(she means baloney). “The big moving
room—the elevator” fascinates her, but she confuses the word with
“refrigerator.” One of the first phrases
she understands fully is from Mr. Rogers:
“The best gift you can offer is your honest self.”

A
happy moment in the book is when Lloyd, her beau and husband-to-be, says he loves
her and she says she loves him.

In
The Cooked Seed, Min offers us an
unflinchingly honest self-portrait. She
does not exclude anything unflattering.
Moreover, the book depicts an
extraordinary metamorphosis, from loyal Chinese worker to an American woman. The book also depicts Min’s struggles as a
single parent, and later, how she and her husband, Lloyd, prepare her daughter
for the SAT’s and other college entrance exams.

The Cooked Seed is a compelling portrait of life in contemporary China and of the US immigrant experience. It is also the story of a strong pragmatic
woman as she perseveres from “Chinese fatalism” and a propensity “to dwell on
the literature of misery, exile, imprisonment, and despair” to American
optimism, the “tomorrow-is-another-day attitude” of Scarlett O’Hara.

“Truth,”
Min writes, “would lead to real beauty.”
In The Cooked Seed, the
language is spare, utilitarian, and true.

About Me

Yolanda A. Reid is the author of The Honeyeater--a contemporary women's novel about love, heartbreak and betrayal that was a finalist for the 2014 Diva Awards. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in literary journals and e-zines such as “Women Writers: An E-zine”; Starlight Poets; Mysteries of the Lyric World; Many Voices, Many Lands and others. Her first novel--Porridge & Cucu: My Childhood--is about a young girl's adolescence. Her debut poetry collection, SONNETS TO THE JAPIM BIRD, is scheduled for release in June 2017. She lives in the USA.